Hot Mess: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #1)

by Diamond, Jaine

  Summer shook her head at me. “Seriously, Ash. When did you start setting the bar so damn low? You used to have standards.”

  “I did,” I said wistfully, and she laughed.

  “You used to be a snot-nosed little fuck with attitude for miles, who wouldn’t listen to anyone.”

  “Was I?”

  “You know you were. That’s half the reason I fell in love with you.”

  “Huh,” I said vaguely.

  “And half the reason I broke up with you.”

  I gave her a look. “I thought the reason you broke up with me—”

  “Alright, alright. Don’t start.” She waved a hand in the air to silence me. “You know I love Yancy, but he’s no good for us going forward as a band.”

  “Glad you know, so I don’t have to break it to you.”

  “Let’s get Brody,” she said.

  I stared at her. Was she high?

  I looked up at the ceiling again, shaking my head. “You don’t just ‘get’ Brody Mason,” I informed her. “It’s been over a decade and he’s never taken on any other band but Dirty.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because he doesn’t need to, financially or otherwise. He has his own money, plus they’re basically his family.”

  “Exactly. He doesn’t manage Dirty for the money. He does it for the love. And that is exactly why we need him.”

  Okay. Maybe she wasn’t high.

  That was kinda making sense…

  I looked at her. “Am I drunk, or did you just start making sense?”

  Summer grinned. “The question is, do you think Brody loves us enough to take us on?”

  Now that… I had no answer to.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ash

  I didn’t see Danica for another three days. It was Tuesday morning when she showed up at my door with the furniture delivery guys, bright and early. In other words, ten o’clock.

  I didn’t do much brighter or earlier than that.

  I had the Chili Peppers on when they arrived, and Danica buzzed around my apartment drinking tea from her industrial-size floral-print mug, humming along to “Give It Away” and giving directions like nothing had happened the other night.

  Like I didn’t fuck her with my fingers in a bar, make her come and then lick her sweet juices off my fingers.

  I’d already grabbed a coffee down the block before they got here, and while I sat at my new glass-top dining room table, trying to decide which song from Blood Sugar Sex Magik—best Red Hot Chili Peppers album of all time—to add to my vortex playlist, Danica darted from room to room, high on caffeine.

  After the delivery dudes set up my new bed and left, she buzzed around measuring walls, tapping nails into the drywall with her little hammer and hanging picture hooks.

  I still wasn’t convinced she didn’t have some kind of contractor she could call in to do this shit, but if she wanted to be here herself, I wasn’t complaining.

  Even if she kept trying to sing along to songs she didn’t quite know the words to.

  Fortunately, she was a way better dancer than she was a singer. And as she got into her work, she started wiggling her ass as she went.

  It was June and the weather was pretty gorgeous, so she was wearing cutoffs and a loose T-shirt that hung off one shoulder. She had her pretty hair up in a long ponytail with a little yellow scarf tied around it. And all I could seem to focus on were her bare neck and her naked thighs.

  When she stood in front of me, sticking her ass out a bit and kinda jiggling as she hammered a nail into the dining room wall, my dick just about punched through my shorts.

  I put my head in my hand and tried to focus on my phone.

  Summer had already sent me a link to her vortex playlist. Leave it to her to finish her homework first.

  I opened it in my iTunes. I’d listen to the playlist properly—front to back, through my headphones, and probably several times—later. For now, I put it on random and let it rip through the speakers that were connected through Bluetooth all over my apartment—pretty much the only things I’d told Danica she couldn’t move.

  “Ooooh, romantic,” she teased when “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” came on. She tossed me a bright smile over her shoulder. “Was this from the album Van Halen? I feel like there were so many great songs on that one.”

  “Yeah,” I said, kinda surprised she even knew what band it was. “Can you believe this came out in 1978? I feel like these guys were ahead of their time.”

  “I feel like that was before that law was passed that every rock album had to have a killer rock single and a killer ballad on it, or it wouldn’t get released.”

  I snorted. “You mean in the eighties? Like ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ and ‘Love Bites’?”

  “‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ and ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’,” she said.

  “‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.”

  “‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’ and ‘Angel’.”

  “‘Smokin’ in the Boys Room’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’.”

  She cocked her head, unsure. “Van Halen again?”

  “Mötley Crüe.”

  “Damn. I knew that. ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time’ and ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’.”

  “Oh, she didn’t just bring Poison into the conversation. You like eighties rock?”

  She grinned. “I like music, period. But yeah, I’m a little sweet on the eighties. New wave, especially. But my favorite rock ballad of all time is ‘Hysteria.’ Def Leppard. Don’t make fun of me.” She made a little swoony face, then sauntered off into the bedroom.

  I got up and followed. “Why would I make fun of you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, like that genuinely stumped her. “My sister just always makes fun of my musical tastes.”

  “Maybe your sister should stuff it.”

  She gave me a cute little smile.

  “What does she listen to?” I asked.

  “Hmm. Drake?”

  “I rest my case.”

  Danica laughed.

  I leaned on the doorframe and watched her hammering up another picture hook.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Is the hammering bothering you? I’m almost done.”

  “It’s not bothering me. Just curious what you’re hanging up.”

  “Well,” she said, blinking her gorgeous eyes at me, “you saw all those pictures of flowers at my place, right?”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “I’m kidding! No flowers for you. But I did get you a few things…”

  I followed her back into the kitchen, where the delivery dudes had left a big pallet lying on the bar. “Help me unwrap it?”

  I helped her remove the brown paper and cellophane stuff, and the cardboard corners that were protecting the frames. There were three of them.

  “One for the dining room,” she said. “One for your bedroom. And one for the entryway… This will be the first thing people see when they walk in.”

  She lifted the first frame and presented the picture to me. The frame was about two feet by three feet, with a white matte inside. And a black-and-white photo of a concert. Packed audience, big stage with lights beaming up into the sky. You could see amps and drums on the stage, and blurs that were probably people, but whatever band it was, you couldn’t tell by looking at it.

  I knew the venue, though. The event.

  It was DreamWarp festival. Every year, the stage setups were different. That year, it had a Carnival theme.

  It was the year I met Dirty… right behind that stage.

  I looked at Danica. “What is this?”

  Her shoulders dropped. “Damn. You don’t like it.”

  “I like it. Where did you get it?”

  “It wasn’t hard,” she said. “It’s a press image. From a stock photo site. I just purchased the highest-resolution version they had and got it printed at a lab. That’s you on the stage, I think, with the Penny Pushers. It said so in the credit
s, but you can’t really tell.”

  “Okay. Why did you get it?”

  She turned and propped it up on the couch. “Sorry, it’s getting heavy… Why? Because I knew I wanted to get you a few pieces of art. You approved it in the budget, but I wasn’t sure what you’d like. I thought it would be nice to surprise you, so I talked to DJ Summer. And Dylan Cope.”

  I stared at her.

  “You talked to Summer,” I repeated. “And Dylan.”

  “Yes. You know, your bandmate. And your best friend.”

  Okay… that threw me.

  This girl had more courage than I would’ve guessed. Not just anyone had the gonads to call up a rock star.

  “Um, they were very nice,” she went on, getting fidgety as I stared her down. “I sent them both a message and Summer called me back. Dylan emailed me from Europe. I mean, he was a little harder to reach. I went through band management. They’re pretty responsive with their emails, though. Someone named Maggie helped me out?”

  Hmm. Neither Summer or Dylan had let on that they’d talked to her.

  Zane’s wife, Maggie, who was Brody’s assistant, hadn’t said a word, either.

  “So…” she said, “you and I had talked about the band poster we’re keeping on your living room wall. I wasn’t sure if you’d want more band images, and Summer and Dylan didn’t seem to think you’d be all that keen on images of yourself all over your place…”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling a little… exposed? Uncomfortable, maybe, that my friends knew me so well. But they were right. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Um… but they both thought you’d like the DreamWarp one. And I was thinking this one, for your bedroom.” Danica reached to lift the second framed image. Same size, another black-and-white photo with a white matte around it.

  It was a photo I took myself. A beach on the Oregon coast; just an empty stretch of coastline. Gray ocean, a few giant rocks standing in the water. No one was in the photo, but Dylan was standing next to me when I took it, and I could remember standing with him on that beach. It was sometime on tour, maybe a couple of years after I met him. The two of us had taken off to the beach, a many, many hour detour from where we were supposed to be.

  We did that a lot back then. Took detours. Together.

  At that point, I was pretty sure that someday we were both gonna leave our bands and form a band together. Maybe I really wanted to believe that, for just a few minutes, standing there on that beach.

  I’d told him we’d use that image for our album cover.

  I knew as I looked at it, all framed in Danica’s arms, that he’d chosen this photo for me for a reason.

  We’re not done yet, that image seemed to say.

  Maybe he wanted me to remember the friendship we’d had. How close we’d been.

  Before I fucked it up by kissing him.

  I scratched my hand through my hair. “Cool.”

  “Uh…” Danica moved to set the frame on the couch next to the other one. “Here’s the last one…” She picked up the last frame and presented it to me. This one was the same size, but the matte was wider. The image in the middle was smaller.

  It was a black-and-white photo of my mom.

  She looked young in the picture, the way I remembered her. I had no idea how Summer or Dylan had gotten ahold of that image, but there it was.

  “I thought this one could go in the dining room,” Danica said. I looked up, meeting her eyes. She looked mildly terrified as she searched my face. “I mean, personally I always find it a little weird when people have photos of family members in their bedrooms staring at them when they’re changing and stuff…” She laughed a little, but it was forced. “Shit. These just keep getting worse and worse, don’t they?” She set the framed image carefully on the kitchen bar. “Honestly, Ashley, the framing is the most expensive part. If you’re not happy with any of the images, we can switch them out.”

  “I like the images.”

  “It’s okay, you’re not hurting my feelings. I’d rather that you’re happy with them. That they’re images you want to see every day.”

  “I want to see them every day,” I told her. “They’re perfect.”

  She stared at me. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and went back to the dining room table. I was moved, actually, that they’d all done this for me. Wasn’t sure what else to say about it.

  But I couldn’t handle Danica looking at me like that anymore.

  Like she’d seen right into my most personal shit, and understood or something. Like she understood me on some new level now.

  It made me want her more… and I didn’t love that.

  Already wanted her enough.

  “I’ve, uh, got some work to do,” I muttered. “Let me know if you need help hanging them.”

  “Okay. For sure. I should be fine, though.”

  I turned up Summer’s playlist, which was still rolling along. And tried to tune Danica out.

  The truth was, ever since she’d brought me those six pennies and a bunch of cool ideas about how to improve my home—which I didn’t even realize needed improving until she laid it out for me—I’d been thinking about her, way too much. And not just about what she’d look like with my dick in the back of her throat.

  Bottom line, I liked the way my place felt when she was in it.

  Since meeting her that night in the rain and thinking she was some girl I’d made out with years ago when I was drunk… or maybe some fantasy fuck… she’d become so much more than that.

  She’d become a real person. A girl—no, a woman with a brain, a mind of her own, talents.

  Integrity.

  She was also incredibly nice, and turned out I liked that about her. A lot.

  Go fucking figure.

  “I never would’ve pegged you for a George Michael fan,” she said.

  I glanced up. She was still standing in the living room, watching me as Summer’s music played.

  “I’m not.”

  I went back to my phone, and finally I heard her get back to work. Summer had texted again, asking for my playlist.

  Me: Working on it

  Me: Do I have you or Dylan to thank for the photo of my mom?

  Summer: That was me. You like?

  Me: Yeah I like

  Summer: Good. How r things with new girl? Danica…

  Summer: Love her name by the way. Sounds like a snack.

  Me: You talked to her on the phone?

  Summer: Yeah. She’s adorable.

  Me: Shes here now, hanging pictures

  Me: Jesus what is this music

  Summer: What?

  Me: Your playlist

  The song had switched and I checked to see what was playing.

  I glanced over at Danica. She was in the front hall, and I could just see her ass twitching to the beat as she hung the concert photo.

  Me: This song is called Throb. You trying to get me laid?

  Summer: Is it working?

  She punctuated that with a devil face emoji.

  Me: I took your advice and went alpha rock star on her the other night. In a bar. Backfired, baby

  Summer: Maybe you were doing it wrong.

  Another devil face emoji.

  Me: Think I scared her

  Summer: Why?

  I sighed and considered how to put it.

  Me: I think shes kinda hung up on what went down between me and her twin sister

  Summer: Say what now?

  Summer: Twin??

  Me: She has a twin sister

  Me: I made out with her years ago

  Summer: ???

  Me: This song just got dirtier

  “Is this Ariana Grande or something…?” Danica called over.

  “Janet Jackson,” I said, without looking up.

  I did not want to see whatever her hips were doing right now.

  Me: Do you have any songs that dont sound like a porn soundtrack?

  Summ
er: I don’t, actually.

  Summer: Let’s get back to this twin thing.

  Me: I may have asked her to marry me. When I was drunk

  Summer: Danica?

  Me: Her twin

  Summer: ASH. If you TOLD me you proposed to her sister, I never would’ve told you to go alpha on her.

  Me: Thanks. I didnt propose

  Summer: You just said.

  Me: Im not talking to you about this anymore

  Summer: Of course you are.

  Me: Nope. Sending my playlist soon

  I opened my playlist and contemplated the last few songs to add to it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, Danica kept doing her thing. I had no idea the Beastie Boys were so sexy, but as her ass twitched to “Intergalactic,” I was pretty much hypnotized.

  She was so. Fucking. Sexy.

  Pretty.

  Girly, in the best way.

  All I could think about was the hot, silky-wet sleeve of her cunt bearing down on my fingers as she wriggled in my lap. The way her whole body spasmed when she came and her eyes glazed over.

  The way her lips fells open and I just wanted to fuck every hole she had right in that bar.